Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, arguing this case is far beyond my pay grade, but I support everything that my noble friend Lord Hailsham said in opposition to these amendments. I do not support Amendment 1.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, we have more and more life sentences and less and less judicial discretion. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that deterrence is not a factor in this really should not be glossed over; it is very important.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I am puzzled by the mechanism that the Government are trying to use to increase sentences, which, in some cases, should rightly be higher, in relation to the deaths of emergency workers. After a long period of development, we created a completely new mechanism: the Sentencing Council. Judges must have regard to sentencing guidelines in every case, and those guidelines are complex. They give examples of levels at which sentences should start in certain circumstances.

I see a number of noble Lords around this Chamber who have either acted as police officers or have prosecuted and defended manslaughter cases. In my case, I have done, on one side or the other, a number of one-punch manslaughter cases, in which there was a conviction, and perhaps a sentence of three or four years’ imprisonment. One can imagine circumstances in which that could have arisen where the person who died was an off-duty emergency worker trying to help someone, and the perpetrator of the offence had no idea that that person was an emergency worker.

Surely the better mechanism is to use the flexible, living instrument of the Sentencing Council, and the sentencing guidelines, and not to inhibit the discretion of judges. The Sentencing Council and the judges will, of course, respond to the pressure that rightly arises from the awful case that has given rise to this discussion and this amendment. With great respect to the Minister, relying on “exceptional circumstances”, a description that is always determined in a restrictive way—rightly so—by the Court of Appeal, seems to be the wrong mechanism to achieve the right result.